Reviews: Tomorrowland (2015)

Excerpt: Tomorrowland is the worst movie I’ve seen all year. Shockingly violent, pessimistic with a faux-upbeat ending, boring (again, one can’t help falling asleep), confused about what the story actually was, Tomorrowland is a horror.

Excerpt: Brad Bird’s ‘Tomorrowland’ has enough nostalgic golden glow, characters gazing off in a wonder, and John Williams-esque music cues to seem, in spots, like a Spielberg cosplay. Yet Bird seems to have learned the hard way what J.J. Abrams did in ‘Super 8’: the aesthetics are easy to ape, but one should never underestimate the value Spielberg places on tight, clear, logical storytelling.

Excerpt: It feels dated visually, its narrative is spotty and its characters too broadly defined. On the whole, “Tomorrowland” plays like “Interstellar” for 8 year-olds with Disney’s animatrons thrown in for no discernible reason.

Excerpt: While the film is a visual marvel, one in which the special effects are used to create a genuinely awe-inspiring world that recalls the utopian beauty of earlier sci-fi, it’s repeatedly undercut by its script. Specifically, the way in which it says too little about its plot and far too much about its themes.

Excerpt: A family entertainment that matches the tone and spirit of many live-action Disney offerings from decades’ past, such as 1975’s “Escape to Witch Mountain” and 1991’s “The Rocketeer,” “Tomorrowland” is a good-humored, inventively whimsical sci-fi adventure that’s a lot of fun, particularly for the first two-thirds.

Excerpt: It probably doesn’t help that much of what happens in Tomorrowland seems murky. There’s exposition, but it’s easy to sense that the filmmakers wanted to get past the explanation and show off something cool.

Excerpt: Tomorrowland is one of those movies that clings so tightly to the thin line between “good” and “meh” that it’s difficult to review, because each opinion is hedged with another. There is plenty of good and nothing explicitly “bad,” but none of it goes anywhere, so the audience just sits and waits for 130 minutes.

Excerpt: Even if there’s a lot to recommend for those with inherent love for adventurous, Spielbergian escapades, it’s also one of those films that reaches out for greatness and doesn’t have enough there to successfully grasp. The fact that it could have makes it all the more frustrating.